In the late winter/spring I went to a mall shopping one Saturday afternoon, it was the shittiest day of the year. The temperature had been below freezing, it was very windy and damp then as the day wore on the snow turned to freezing rain and as I usually did on a Saturday afternoon went shopping. I took a bus to this mall and getting off stumbled through the puddles, slush and too lazy to walk around the footpath, climbed over frozen snowbanks taking shortcuts only stupid teenagers take. On the way to the entrance I slipped and slid down the snowbank. Soaking my Jeans on one hip where I fell, so once inside went into a restaurant for a coffee. The place was quite crowded, with lots of other shoppers spending more time there than normal because of the bad weather and I finally found a stool at the counter next to a blond woman.
"Hello, I'm Joan," she said, "I'm in real estate." "Hi," I replied, returning her greeting, "I'm Grace and we shook hands." This, I was to find out was a normal ploy for people in that business, just like insurance agents always hoping for a contact. Anyway I liked her as she seemed nice, was cheerful and chatty accepting the weather as a fact of life which we all do who live in this climate. Like me, she had her coat undone and I saw she was wearing a dress and high heels, something I though was dumb considering the weather but when she told what her profession was, (like insurance sales people) they always try to "look professional". I guessed she was in her mid to late thirties, had a pretty face and blond hair to the nape of her neck, her throat adorned with a single strand of pearls with matching ear rings. Joan asked me about my schooling and whether I had plans to go to college etc. I told her I was just finishing High School and how mother wanted me to go on to college, and was hoping to find a summer job to help save some money for it. We must have spent well over an hour chatting as we dried out over I don't know how many cups of coffee, then as we finally got up to leave and say our good byes, she gave me her business card and told me to call her when School was over for the year after the final exams.